What is your community of interest? Or, Beware the Gerrymander!
California is redrawing her lines. For the first time, an independent citizen’s commission will be heading the effort to apportion state and congressional representatives, instead of the State Legislature. The 14-member commission has been selected from an initial applicant pool of over 30,000. Significant efforts were taken to create a commission that reflected the demographics of the state. The resulting demographic make-up of commission mirrors this work. The commission also evenly split among party affiliation: 5 are either registered Republican or Democrat and the remaining 4 are Decline-to-State, Green Party, or other party. All of this care was taken to ensure that the commission at least appeared neutral and removed from the influence of the political environment.
The new lines will be based on existing City and County lines, rather than on existing district lines or the residences of incumbent lawmakers. When City and County lines can’t ensure evenly-divided districts (465,674 people per Assembly District, with up to a 1% variation), the Commission is instructed to take into account communities of interest. Defining these communities will be part of the Redistricting Commission’s public hearings, in which we can all participate.
Defined, a community of interest is: “A contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation.” What does this mean to you? What does it mean in the dynamism of demographic shifts and the movement inland by California residents along with the hard truth of geography? Redistricting asks us to examine what is fundamental and fair in representative government.
This commission is the perfect opportunity for you to shape this effort. The real work is set to begin and there is a way for you to participate. On Saturday, May 21, there will be a public workshop in Oakland (Place: TBD). We here at EBYD will keep you up-to-date and connected to the process – join our Facebook group for the latest information.
If you’re interested in taking part in the redistricting process, come to our mixer at Shashamane this Thursday, April 14th from 6 – 7:30. Ask anyone in the room about Redisticting and you will find out more.
What “communities of interest” mean to me is “another excuse to gerrymander”. Whether districts are designed to create safe seats for Republicans, Democrats, whites, blacks, immigrants, gays, straights, or people with a lot of guns it doesn’t really matter. It is the drawing of districts in order to decide who will win elections instead of drawing them to decide which population group you belong. I have all kinds of “interests”, some more political than others.
I have all kinds of political views, some more right, left, or in the middle, and I don’t really know which of those will be most helped or hurt by which of these “communities of interest” the commission decides are deserving of gerrymandering, and I don’t really care to know. What I do know is that we should be picking politicians and not the other way around. We should be the ones picking the issues that we think are most important and not the political powers that be telling us what they are, and that’s exactly what drawing boundaries by “communities of interest” accomplishes. For example, if (as in the past) districts were drawn according to political party concentrations then you can count on political party being the determining factor of who wins and loses the elections. But if they drew them based on race then race would become the most important issue. If they drew them on the basis of boxers or briefs then that could become the most important issue that would determine whether you get elected or not.
It is madness to put the power to decide these things into the hands of the people drawing the districts. They should not even be allowed to know these population pattern data and thus they could draw fair districts by geography and population rather than according to some political calculus designed for example to divide people up by race (which seems to be what so many people are pushing for (particularly racially oriented political groups and candidates). In addition to this being unfair to those of us who don’t think race matters it also heightens racial conflict and tension. If someone is in a racially gerrymandered district this will make it highly unlikely that he will have to have many political dealings with people of other races. After all, people of the “wrong race” will be written out of politics in racially gerrymandered districts all things being equal.
This will allow sharper racist ideas and rhetoric to have more acceptance than it would if politicians had to appeal to a more mixed race population. Why in the world would we want to heighten racial divisiveness like this? It is madness! Commissioners should reject the idea of gerrymandering by race, sexual identity, and so on for all the same reasons the voters rejected gerrymandering by party affiliation in the election.